Life during the Martial Law era: part 1

The first inkling many people had that something definitely was amiss that morning was the eerie silence of the airwaves. For the first time since the last world war, the radios were silent; it crackled with neither the sound of music nor that of human voice, but rather, of a ghostly, unemotional hiss of static. It was as if Manila’s still sleepy inhabitants woke up to a city seemingly frozen in time.

Even in those early years of the seventies, a full decade prior to the advent of cable news and entertainment services — and years before CNN became a byword — Manila’s airwaves was already a busy tangled web of electronic transmissions (AM was king then) what with its hodgepodge of radio stations and four, if I recall it right, television stations that broadcast a steady stream of daily news and assorted programming during the day.

The all too sudden disappearance of familiar faces and voices from both mediums was, for lack of a better word, unnerving to anyone so used to being bombarded with news from the past day’s events. More disconcerting than the silence of the radios, however, was that those bastions of free speech, the newspapers — especially those that made it their life’s work criticizing the powers-that-be — were suspiciously absent on the stands. It was a clear sign that things weren’t as normal as it should be, at least, not in this part of the world.

Far from becoming a ghost town, Manila was abuzz with life, as people went about their daily lives unperturbed — only to slowly realize that everything was indeed strangely different from what it was yesterday. Maybe it was the sudden appearance of armed soldiers in the once neutral streets of the city, or perhaps it was the absence of the many things that people have gotten used to and have taken for granted all those years that made many wonder what in heavens was going on; because along with the broadcasts and ubiquitous dailies, gone too were the daily rallies and protests that was becoming synonymous to the incumbent’s administration.